Scanning up and down looking for potential collisions, he steps down hard on the pedal and begins pumping with everything he has. Set on the highest gear the acceleration is slow and steady, but the top speed is near breakneck on this downward slope. He descends from the furthest point from the collection of identical row homes, nothing if not boring and pretty, atop the highest hill at the northern most end of the suburban housing complex. It's quiet today, which suits him. Less people means fewer distractions and fewer opportunities to interrupt the experiment.
The one potentially dangerous facet of this attempt is that the final curve is shallow and completely manageable, even at 40 mph, but it's a blind curve. 5 AM Saturday morning rarely has any foot traffic, or cars or neighborhood animals. Even security is in the hut until at least 7 AM. Not deterred, he continues to push his physical limits and pedals harder and harder. The fixed gear bike almost breaking free from his foot straps to spin at its own pace. He flexes his calves and screeches a bit as he slows down. It is short lived. The grade pulls him ever forward to the curve. Gravity and his momentum tugging him toward his potential demise.
Think! What was that place called in Jersey? That skateboard park with the bike ramp... Veteran something... VETERAN'S PARK!! Veteran's Park he chanted, over and over, drumming up images of bikers and skateboarders floating above half pipes, spinning and kicking. Am I going too fast? Whatever, I'll get such huge air. It's 8 there now, so there might be a bunch of kids. Fuck it. We're in now. No going back.
Just a few seconds from, without adjustment for the curve, flying clear off the pavement and onto the assortment of rocks and shrubbery below, with a controlled exhale he cleansed himself of fear, doubt and second guessing. Furiously pumping at the pedals, white knuckling his grip, he gulped down and said aloud, Veteran's Park.
A labor of love to the community, the Berkeley, NJ skate park opened in 2017. Having sat idle and in disrepair as a result of Hurricane Sandy, there was a recent grand opening where pros and enthusiasts were invited. Diego wasn't going to miss it for the world. He sat on an 18 hour bus ride to be there when some of his heroes hit the ramps and stayed behind for autographs and photo ops. Everything was going well for him. He had a new found power, a freedom to go anywhere whenever. Unsure of the limits of his power he sought to test it today.
Veteran's Park
Over and over again he said it. Remembering what city he shouted, Berkeley!
In an instant he was on the California campus of UC Berkeley. Screaming and frantic, almost losing control of his bike as he careened toward the squatting man in the Sculpture Garden. In a split second, he again said Veteran's Park. Not wanting to wreck into one of the potentially priceless, as far as his bank account was concerned, works of art, or being destroyed by collapsing into an immovable two ton stone or steel sculpture, he willed himself away. He closed his eyes and held his breath and poof.
The warm air on his face changed to chill. It was windy all of a sudden, windier than one experiences biking at 40 mph. Just as he opens his eyes he sees two kids diving off their skateboard and scooter out of his lane of travel and with little room to prepare goes soaring into the air off the lip of the half pipe. Straight up. No turn. No trick. Just air. He is weightless for a moment. It seems to last forever. He can see clearly across the horizon and into the expanse of the skies above. He thinks himself untouchable, feeling triumphant for completing the poof to the skate park, even after accidentally making his way to UC Berkeley and almost dying self inflicted blunt force trauma via crashing face first into an outdoor sculpture. Had he even been there? Where did he even read about that place? How much travel did his parents do with him as a baby? How much is locked away in the recesses of his mind, used as reference material and not cognitively sitting at the front of his decision making or filling the memories of his youth? This is all so new. As he begins to come down, he says aloud, Home. Gone. The boys stand in silence, reeling from the strange guy that just zipped passed them and hit that half pipe like a champ. Admiring the effort they gave a pass to him disappearing before their very eyes. Screaming at each other, several of them went home, dumbfounded. Few others sat and tried to figure out what just happened, staring at the floor before them.
In the blink of an eye, he is two inches above the floor in his kitchen. Still upright on the bicycle he falls the two inches landing on the back tire. His weight on the bicycle is disproportionate and he falls back. With his feet snugly set in the straps on the pedals, he pivots at the knee and falls straight back, seemingly faster than he ought after falling a mere two inches. He hits the floor flat on his back with a thunderous thud and the wind is thrust from his lungs and they seize, preventing him from taking in air. The bike, with nowhere to go, falls back on him, greeting his face with the handlebars. He mouths, ow, fuck me. Struggling to breathe and feeling the twist of his knees, he panics.
There is a click of the lock on the front door as the deadbolt shifts into its resting place and the door swings open violently. Jamish comes storming in,
“Dude!! What the fuck are you doing? I told you I wanted the house cleaned and you're what, riding your bike, INSIDE?!?!?!”
Gasping for air and writhing in pain, he waves his hands frantically pleading for help. Not wanting to reveal his ability to Jamish just yet, he devises scenarios that would explain lying on the kitchen floor with his bike on top of him and his feet firmly clicked into place in the pedals. Coughing and straining to breathe he lets out a whimper and sheepishly accepts his verbal lashings for the mess in the kitchen.
I don't have an answer for why I'm in the kitchen with this bicycle. I'm an idiot. If you could help me unbuckle my feet though, that would be helpful.
“NOTHING?! You have nothing to give me besides 'I'm an idiot?' Not this time, man. I told you I am having people over. I thoroughly cleaned this house. You sat in your room and what? Jumped out your window yesterday? I was calling for you to help me and you were nowhere to be found. And now this?”
No look, I'm an idiot. Really. I did this jump at a skate park and I was trying to hit the zenith and experience that brief moment of weightlessness and then recreate that here.
“Wait, did you just say zenith? Who are you?”
Still coughing, he is now dealing with a creeping ringing in his ears and a throbbing pain from his coccyx up his spine to the back of his head.
“Maybe it's a concussion? I hope I'm not dying.”
Do not try to garner sympathy from me. No. Do not do it!
“I'm not. I swear. Just, if you could, stop yelling? Please. You're drowning out the ringing in my head...”
Jamish rolls his eyes and shifts his weight onto his back foot. Glaring at Diego disapprovingly, he reaches down and unclicks his feet from the pedals. Scanning about the kitchen, looking for wheel scuffs and broken dishes, he finds little disturbed. Squinting his eyes in disappointment, he reluctantly huffs out and goes back to close the front door. He finds his brown leather messenger bag with the frayed strap open. After a cursory glance he determines nothing is missing and resigns himself to the thought that perhaps he'd forgotten to zip it closed. Gathering his things, he closes and latches the front door and retires to his bedroom to prepare for the evening event.
Diego sheepishly stands to his feet. Despite feeling defeated from his encounter with Jamish and sore from the fall, he is excited about today's progress. He poofed from coast to coast in an instant and it seems his feeling was correct, he maintains the momentum he has when he poofs. Now to see if he can additively increase his velocity or if what he can reach is terminal outside of artificial means. Pausing for a moment and realizing this thinking is slightly out of his realm of expertise. One semester of physics has not prepared him adequately for all this.
He takes off his shoes, wets some paper towels and wipes away the bike scuffs from the linoleum flooring and makes his way to bed. He feels much more tired than he decides he ought to and glances over to his alarm clock to see the time is 6 PM. Blinking a few times he tries to gather himself.
It was 7 when I hit that jump. I'm sure of it. That makes it only 8 in Jersey. Where did I go? What did I do all those hours? Ugh... this headache. Fml.
He closed his eyes and breathed in all the air he could. Holding it for a moment, he listened to the pounding of his heart and tried to find the places on his body where he could feel his pulse. Slowly exhaling, he listened to the sound he made as his lips bounced listlessly against the push of air from deep within his lungs and with the help of his flexed diaphragm. He breathed in again and with that, he drifted off to sleep.